Wild for Life Foundation Founder and President Katia Louise, interacts with one of the wild horses she rescued that was roaming on federal lands at the Wild Horse Foundation’s facility in Ramona Friday, July 7, 2017.

Wild horses rescued by the Wild for Life Foundation that was roaming on federal lands have a new home at the Wild Horse Foundation’s facility in Ramona Friday, July 7, 2017.

One of the wild horses rescued by the Wild for Life Foundation that was roaming on federal lands at the Wild Horse Foundation’s facility in Ramona Friday, July 7, 2017.

A Tuesday, July 18, meeting in Washington, D.C., could determine whether thousands of wild horses and burros on public lands will face euthanasia or sale to slaughterhouses.

At the meeting, the House Appropriations Committee will review the fiscal 2018 spending bill for the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency and related areas. The review is commonly referred to as a markup.

Included in the $31.4 billion bill is language that forbids the killing or sale for slaughter of wild horses and burros roaming millions of acres in the West.

That language has been a part of prior House spending bills. But the Trump administration wants to take out the language to deal with what officials say is a horse overpopulation problem that threatens to damage public lands and overwhelm the budget for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program.

Wild horse advocacy groups have mobilized to keep the language, saying wild horses are an enduring symbol of the West. Advocates question the BLM’s horse population data and fault the bureau for not aggressively pursuing birth control vaccines to curb the herd’s numbers.

They’ve also pressured Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that deals with interior spending. The American Wild Horse Campaign on Monday, July 17, released a poll showing 78 percent of voters in Calvert’s district favor the ban on wild horse slaughter.

“Sanctioning the slaughter of tens of thousands of horses is a disgraceful, shameful idea. It is an unacceptable idea that will produce protests in the streets, from Reno to Washington, D.C.,” Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, said in a news release. “Mass slaughter will happen only over the cries, protests and interventions of the American people.”

Calvert sounds willing to at least consider an amendment to allow for wild horses to be put down or sold for slaughter.

“In a perfect world, these animals would be adopted and we wouldn’t have this problem,” Calvert said July 13. “The horses that are on the range, it’s not just a matter of health of the herd, it’s a matter of the health of the environment.”

Noting the $80 million cost of the BLM’s wild horse program, Calvert said there are other pressing needs — Indian Health Service funding, for example — in the interior budget.

“There’s only so many dollars, and so we’ve got to get control of this horse issue because this number is only going to increase,” Calvert said. “I want a humane and practical solution. Some of these horses are in bad shape and that’s not right either.”

“We’ll look at (an amendment) if it comes up,” the congressman said. “I don’t want to see any animals destroyed. But it happens because there’s only so many resources.”

Last week, Calvert voted against an amendment to ban federal funding for inspections of horses ticketed for slaughter. The amendment offered by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Downey, failed by a 27-25 vote in the appropriations committee.

“This is an incredibly difficult issue because everyone wants horses to be treated humanely,” Calvert said in a written statement after the vote. “The question ultimately becomes what is the most humane way to deal with horses at the end of their life? Subjecting horses to travel long distances in poor conditions to be killed in a Mexican slaughterhouse under poor conditions — or — having highly regulated, humane facilities closer to the horses.”

Jeff Horseman got into journalism because he liked to write and stunk at math. He grew up in Vermont and he honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know. He’ll do his best to answer, even if it involves a little math.

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